Toshiba and CBS promote new Star Trek hybrid disc box set

Toshiba and CBS Home Entertainment are running a promotion for the new HD DVD box set for the first season of "Star Trek: The Original Series." The deal, called "A Stunning Offer," allows purchasers of the TV series box set and Toshiba HD DVD player a coupon to get a remote control shaped like a phaser from the popular series.

Besides the promotion with Toshiba, the box set is also somewhat revolutionary in that it's a set of hybrid HD DVDs, which also includes a standard definition (DVD-Video) version of each Title.

“HD DVD is taking ‘The Original Series’ where no ‘Trek’ episode has gone before,” said Louis Masses, Toshiba digital A/V group business development director. “The leading-edge technologies in HD DVD players are taking ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’ to a truly new dimension for fans. Partnering with CBS, we are excited to be bringing this landmark TV series into the homes of fans and to be developing a promotion that appealed specifically to the ‘Trek’ fan.”

The "phaser remote" offer will be Limited to available supplies. It carries a reported $69.95 retail value.

Originally posted by duckNrun: A friend told me he ran across something that was saying that most of the HD-DVD titles that have come out are just upscaled versions of the 720p SD discs as opposed to native 1080p...

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

Fanboys need not reply lol

- It's just more stupid rumour & garbage (undoubtedly put out by the infantile Blu-ray.com cretins, it's just their 'style').

The originals were shot on film (which means they are not confined to 4:3 a/r either).

Well, as you can probably guess from my name I'm a hard-core Trekkie and proud to be so, but if, like me, you're interested in getting your hands on this nifty Phaser-Shaped remote control (which is apparently compatible with all ToshibaHD-DVD players ??), it's seems a bit much to have to run out and buy a specific Toshiba player just to get it.

I have no bones about buying (yet again!) another version - in this case Hi-Def - of the odd Star Trek season here and there, (good lord! - they have come in VHS, laser disc, VCD, DVD, and now HD-DVD; what's next?) but maybe we'll be able to glom on to the phaser-remote separately.

Apparently, consumers ...

Quote:...can redeem the Phaser, which carries a $69.95 approximate retail value, by mail.

If I can find a pic of this 'phaser-remote' somewhere, I'll post it here.

In the meantime, consider the implications of this boxed set. You're making a financial committment (investment) to the HD-DVD format. You may have been considering only going Blu-Ray. This phaser-remote therefore comes at a high price if you should finally settle on blu-ray. (My, my, the commercial marketing-boys have certainly been burning the midnight oil here, the sly devils).

Someone will have to come out with a blu-ray-only (Sony perhaps) hand-held, flip-open communicator-type remote control. You know, the kind Captain Kirk flipped opened to say, "Beam me up, Scotty". Or maybe, a tri-corder version a-la Deep Space 9. Or how about a Borg version a-la 7 of 9 model? (I mean, you'd have to buy that one, right? ("Resistance is futile.")

Regardless of the type, I hope the remote will have all kinds of nifty lights and make little squeaky star-trek noises when you push the buttons. Who knows? :-)

Originally posted by duckNrun: A friend told me he ran across something that was saying that most of the HD-DVD titles that have come out are just upscaled versions of the 720p SD discs as opposed to native 1080p...

First of all SD discs are NOT 720p. SD DVD's are encoded in 480i.

Remember that your source is usually a 35mm film shot at 24 fps and remember that film is analog.

A simplified explanation: To produce an HD DVD or BluRay disc you have to convert this analog source to something that's digital. You scan the films to produce a digital "master" thru a process called datacine using 2K (~ 2048 x 1080 pixels) or 4K (~ 4096 by 2400 pixels) resolution. So you see a film source can hold more data than high-def. These are then encoded on HD and/or BluRay discs as 1920x1080p/24fps.

Given a good quality film source and master the picture has to be "downscaled" to the 1080p resolution of HD DVD and BD.

Sometimes if your master is not up to par then you get a bad transfer. For example see the comparison between the first HD DVD version of Full Metal Jacket and the remastered deluxe edition: